


old scars

by orphan_account



Series: Create Something Every Day! (October 2018) [15]
Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Gen, October Prompt Challenge, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, back from the dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 14:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16348193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Prompt 16: Obsessed.





	old scars

"Alms, alms."

Inej keeps her step quick and her eyes sharp as she passes down the street that runs along the Ketterdam docks. The last time she was here Kaz came to greet her, and his presence had kept away the beggars and pickpockets. But not this time.

She does not resent them, though; not the powdered girl in old silks who tries to beckon Inej into an alley — "So long at sea, Captain, you must be weary," — or the little boy who tries to sell her matches and pick her pocket, or the weeping man who cites half a dozen things to worship in the hopes of catching her pious charity. They, like the cup-trick charlatans and the flower vendors, are all just products of this rough city, and she has been too far from home for them to know her. In her high boots and flared clean coat, hair bound up in a scarf beneath her hat, she is visibly different. A sailor, a tourist — a mark.

But Inej knows all the tricks and therefore she dodges them nimbly, rebuffs politely but firmly, flashes a dagger in her sleeve at any who get too close. Perhaps wishes she had changed into her shadowy clothes and made her way through the city by leaping rooftop to rooftop and avoiding all this nonsense.

"Alms, alms," sings the voice again, as she turns into the salt-soaked alley that will lead her jaggedly to Kaz. She wonders if she can be fast enough to outrun the news of her arrival, to beat his whisperers and surprise him. She doubts it.

A pale, dirty hand emerges from a soggy brown bundle of cloaks and catches at her suddenly, bright against her brown skin. Inej reacts swiftly, pulling her arm away, annoyed that her reflexes allowed anyone to get so close. Annoyed further when she realizes the beggar has plucked the dagger from her sleeve.

"Welcome back to Ketterdam, Wraith," says the alms-woman in her melodious voice, and Inej has only moments to realize she recognizes that voice and flip backwards out of the way before the dagger zips past her and slams into the soggy wood of the house that makes up an alley wall.

"Dunyasha?" she breathes, not believing it. The last she had seen of the girl she had been a beautiful broken thing, sprawled bleeding on the cobblestones.

When Dunyasha throws off the rough hessian blankets she had been cloaking herself with it becomes immediately apparent that she is still beautiful and broken. Her limbs have healed strangely, leaving her twisted and misshapen. And her impoverishment must not be a ruse: she is filthy, her auburn hair matted and her once-gleaming smile yellowed, her beautiful cream garb replaced with ugly rags, her bare feet black to the ankle. Inej, who remembers her as the gleaming example of ambition and royalty, is astounded and horrified.

But despite the shock of this, Inej has already dropped into a fighting stance, calculated the best way to get advantage in this narrow alley. Perhaps she could leap from wall to wall, up and away — Dunyasha surely couldn't follow with her former speed. 

Indeed, Dunyasha is barely on form, though she too has taken a stance, a mockery of the light-on-her-feet readiness she had once intimidated Inej with. But no more blades are forthcoming, there are no sharp things thrown or whirling in her hands, no puff of terrible blinding dust.

"Dunyasha," says Inej again, straightening, lowering her hands. "You cannot truly mean to fight me."

The girl hisses like an enraged cat. "Can I not? You did this to me. You let me fall, and you left me to die in the street."

"You were trying to assassinate me at the time," Inej points out, remaining calm. 

She watches in surprise as all of Dunyasha's bitter, shrieking fury gets reigned in, as she draws it back and packs it away behind the placid mask Inej remembers so well from their fights. 

"You are right, of course. I was not used to being bested. I acted dishonorably, and I paid the price. And I have been paying ever since."

That, at least, awakens some sympathy in Inej. It is not easy to be impoverished in Ketterdam, especially not if you have reason to take issue with the Dregs. Inej wonders what Dunyasha has had to do these last few years to survive.

"I do not consider you my responsibility," says Inej, calmly, with the authority she's grown into as a captain of her own vessel. "But you did always fascinate me. Are you too proud to accept charity from your enemy?"

There is a long pause between them. "Not anymore," Dunyasha cedes, defeated.

"Come on, then," says Inej. "I have some clothes on the ship you can wear."

She won't be seeing Kaz today. He may take that as a slight, prickly man as he is, but he may also end up knowing exactly why she doesn't come. Inej tried not to worry too much about what he will think of her these days. She has her own life to live.

**Author's Note:**

> i kind of want to write more and make it inejyasha so maybe when i'm not just focusing on short fics for promptober i'll come back to it.


End file.
